Day 15 Tuesday 11 November

This morning was spent looking for a place to stay for the next week in Waikiki. We eventually found an apartment in the last building we stayed in, just a short distance away from where we are now. After booking & securing the place (rather than sleep on the street with all the homeless) we headed off to the Iolani Palace.

The Iolani Palace was built by one of the last Hawaiian Kings, David Kalakaua in 1882. After the Hawaiian monarchy was overthrown the use of the palace changed a number of times & over the years the condition of the building deteriorated, with termites, weather & man, all having a profound impact on its condition. The restoration of the building has now been completed & the trust have spent many years trying to relocate from all around the world the furniture & artefacts that once belonged there but were sold at auction in the early 1900s. The trust has located many items, some even from Australia, with the rooms being refurbished with original items where possible.

We arrived just in time for a tour, picking up tickets from inside the old guards barracks & starting our self guided audio tour nearly straight away. The tour took us room by room through the two story palace & the restoration work has been very good, particularly the timberwork, the staircase & doors are fabulous. Some of the items of furniture are very fine & detailed. In the main reception room the crowns are on display. The tour was interesting & well worth it, we finished by looking through the basement where the kitchen & storerooms were, where now there are more displays, with some exquisite royal jewels, including a 17 carat diamond. There is also a collection of royal orders, including two from the former kingdom of Serbia (a bit of trivia).

The king was way ahead of his time & the building had all the latest mod-cons, running water, electricity, telephones & flushing toilets. Apparently visiting dignitaries & royals were very impressed by the fit out of the palace & the story told by the audio guide is that some European palaces had these modern conveniences fitted after visiting the Iolani Palace.

The grounds outside also have the original pavilion constructed for the coronation of King Kalakaua plus a gated garden containing his crypt holding the remains of a number of members of the royal family. While we were inside the palace a collection of fire trucks & fire ladder trucks arrived with a host of firemen. Once outside we found they were in the middle of a photo shoot, they all had on their dress uniforms. It may have had something to do with the day being Veteran’s Day in the USA, it was a public holiday.

Our Mustang was parked under a giant spreading strangler fig & when we got back to the car it was covered in dropped figs, dropped no doubt from the birds feasting above. We had a quite night updating our blog.